P D S p o t l i g h t

Kobayashi Maru Thinking: How to Get to Great Faster Kobayashi Maru thinking provides an approach to solve intractable problems by changing the starting conditions to redefine the problem.

Mark A. Hart, NPDP, OpLaunch [email protected]

Many Kobayashi P erhaps you have heard the Typical concerns about adding following riddle. people include: Maru thinking • The new people will detract from the If it takes one woman nine months to produce productivity of the existing team mem- a baby, can nine women produce a baby in examples contain bers while they are becoming familiar one month? with the details of the project. stories of people Initially, many people come to the conclu- • Adding more people to the project will sion that there is not a clever answer to this changing‘‘ hats (roles) increase the communication overhead riddle. Often, someone suggests requisition- and keeping the project synchronized for a finite period. ing nine women. will be more difficult. In the Star Trek How Long Will It Take to Complete My Project? Typical arguments for not adding example, Kirk’s role This riddle is based on a statement from the resources include: changed from test classic book The Mythical Man-Month: Es- • An acceptable outcome can be achieved says on Software Engineering1 by Frederick through persuasion. The proper incen- taker to strategist P. Brooks Jr. While at IBM, Brooks added tives will increase productivity. more programmers to a project falling behind • Maintain the budget. There is a pref- and programmer. schedule. The rate of progress on his project erence for saving money in the short didn’t improve. He concluded: “The bearing term. There are suggestions that of a child takes nine months, no matter how development shortcomings can be ad- many women are assigned.” The statement dressed later or by some other group. is used to support advice commonly known • Changes will be disruptive. Making as Brooks’ Law changes will have negative impacts on the current efforts. “Adding more people to a project Problems that may result from not ’’ that is already late will make it later.” adding resources include: - Brooks’ Law • An overworked team will not be able to Brooks’ Law suggests that a no-win situ- complete all the required tasks. ation exists when a project is late. Possible • Additional mistakes and will be made. options seem to be limited: • Individuals are more likely to suffer • Add resources from fatigue. • Don’t add resources A Problem With Too Many New One argument for adding resources is Product Development Projects that new specialists will en- New product development projects can be able other team members late (or fail) for many reasons. When choices to focus on assigned tasks are made to add resources, unsophisticated and the project tasks will decision makers may make sub-optimal choic- be distributed so that ev- es that produce some of the following results: eryone’s workload will be • Re-evaluating project completion dates; more manageable. • Death march conditions for the development team; by changing the starting conditions to solve • Poor user experiences; an intractable problem. It does not involve: • Extra work for the post-sales support • A compromise; Figure 1: Typically, it takes one woman nine months team to fix problems that were not • Turning a difficult situation into an to produce a baby. addressed during development; and/or opportunity (a lemons to lemonade • Hindered progress on the next new approach); product development project. • A “Thomas Hobson’s choice” (a take- Sub-optimal choices are not likely to pro- it-or-leave-it choice in which only one duce great products that position companies option is offered; or for maximum success. This article reviews • A pivot (changing directions but stay- Figure 2: Can nine women produce a baby in one month? some common beliefs about troubled projects ing grounded in what you’ve learned).3 and then addresses one way to overcome How will you close your next innovation perceived no-win scenarios. gap (the time between the product concept “Sometimes, Brooks’ Law is cited inap- and delivering value to an abundant number propriately as an argument for not adding of customers)? How will you get to great resources to an understaffed project. In ad- faster than your previous attempts or faster dition, Brooks’ Law does not directly apply than competitors? to contributors that perform tasks that can be Several factors that may inspire more Figure 3: By changing the appropriate starting conditions, one can achieve the desired result within easily partitioned and isolated—those tasks creative starting conditions include: the desired time. that do not have a significant learning curve • Enlist individual contributors with an and require minimal communication.”2 abundance of domain knowledge and How does one overcome what appears to a mastery of their skills; be a no-win situation? • Facilitate interoperability within the development network (cross-func- No-Win Scenarios tional cooperation and collaboration, In the movie “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” improve communication, etc.); Captain James T. Kirk is noted for saying “I • Combine efforts to produce the ap- don’t believe in the no-win scenario.” His propriate user experience; and character was referencing his experiences as • Adapt development models better suit- a cadet with the Kobayashi Maru test. ed for development networks (where In the Star Trek culture, a Kobayashi Maru individual contributors are either geo- techniques. There would have been limita- reference reminds fans of an apparent no- graphically dispersed or employed by tions in using proprietary open-wireless win scenario where a solution is possible by separate organizations). technology standards such as bluetooth to changing the starting conditions to redefine share information. the problem. Kobayashi Maru Examples in New The founders of Bump Technologies de- Kirk overcame the apparent no-win sce- Product Development veloped a two-part solution. An application nario of the Kobayashi Maru test by changing Many Kobayashi Maru thinking examples on the smartphone uses sensors to supply the starting conditions. contain stories of people changing hats location information and trigger a connec- (roles) for a finite period. In the Star Trek tion. A cloud-based system matches the ap- Changing the Starting Conditions example, Kirk’s role changed from test taker propriate pairs of smartphones and routes Let’s review the original riddle and re- to strategist and programmer. the appropriate information between them. examine the goal. The desired goal was to One example of Kobayashi Maru thinking This facilitates the sharing of contact infor- produce a baby within one month. There was documented in my first article in Vi- mation, photos and social networks. PayPal were no requirements specified regarding the sions magazine—“How to Change Direction is using this capability to send money from woman. There were no explicit requirements in New Product Development in 30 Days one smartphone to another. V regarding the number of women. There were without a Budget.”4 This case study from HP no other project constraints. documented the transition of someone in the To achieve the goal, one solution involves Endno tes role of documentation specialist to designer. altering the initial conditions by selecting a 1 Frederick P. Brooks, Jr. The Mythical Man-Month: Instead of complaining about the product’s Essays on Software Engineering Anniversary Edi- woman with a baby already developing in user interface, it was changed without a proj- tion. Boston. Addison Wesley Longman Inc. 1995. her body. 2 Mark A Hart. “Insights on Brooks’ Law and Launch” ect budget increase and within the previously By changing the appropriate starting con- Visions June 2008. defined time constraints. ditions, one can achieve the desired result 3 Eric Ries. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entre- A more recent example was inspired by a preneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create within the desired time. quest to solve inefficiencies in sharing contact Radically Successful Businesses, New York. Changing the Starting Conditions for information using smartphones. There had Crown Business. 2011. 4 Mark A Hart. “How to change direction in new New Product Development Projects to be a better method than manually typ- product development without a budget” Visions. Kobayashi Maru thinking is characterized ing the information or using cut-and-paste October 2003.

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